Audiobook

Advance Reviews

"A fascinating story, not nearly well enough known on the American side of the Atlantic, artfully and engagingly told." G.J. Meyer New York Times bestselling author of A World Undone: The Story of the Great War 1914 to 1918 & The World Remade: America in World War I

"Why does brilliant vehicle design sometimes end in tragedy? The crash of the intended flagship of the British Empire, the magnificent dirigible R.101, is not only an absorbing human and technical story as told by Bill Hammack. It is also a vital lesson in the risks of even apparently small compromises and unforeseen hazards to big projects when confronted by the forces of nature. Impressively documented, Fatal Flight should be required reading for engineers and political leaders alike." Edward Tenner Author of international bestseller Why Things Bite Back & Our Own Devices

"A well-researched and gripping look at Britain's greatest airship disaster from a new perspective: through the eyes of a man who built, flew, and died with the ship." Dan Grossman, Airship Historian author of airships.net and coauthor of Zeppelin Hindenburg: An Illustrated History of LZ-129

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About the author

Bill Hammack hosts the engineerguyvideo YouTube channel, which
has nearly a half million subscribers and twenty-five million views. Make magazine said of
Bill’s video work that he was a “brilliant science-and-technology documentarian,” whose “videos should
be held up as models of how to present complex technical information visually.” Wired called
them “dazzling.” He teaches engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he
focuses on educating the public about engineering and science. Bill’s work has been recognized by
The National Association of Science Writers with their Science in Society Award, the American
Chemical Society’s Grady-Stack Medal, and the American Institute of Physics’ Science Writing
Award.

DescriptionFatal Flight brings vividly to life the year of
operation of R.101, the last great British airship—a luxury liner three and a half times the length of a 747
jet, with a spacious lounge, a dining room that seated fifty, glass-walled promenade decks, and a smoking
room. The British expected R.101 to spearhead a fleet of imperial airships that would dominate the skies as
British naval ships, a century earlier, had ruled the seas. The dream ended when, on its demonstration flight
to India, R.101 crashed in France, tragically killing nearly all aboard.

Combining meticulous research with superb storytelling, Fatal Flight
guides us from the moment the great airship emerged from its giant shed—nearly the largest building in the
British Empire—to soar on its first flight, to its last fateful voyage. The full story behind R.101 shows that,
although it was a failure, it was nevertheless a supremely imaginative human creation. The technical achievement
of creating R.101 reveals the beauty, majesty, and, of course, the sorrow of the human experience.

The narrative follows First Officer Noel Atherstone and his crew from the
ship’s first test flight in 1929 to its fiery crash on October 5, 1930. It reveals in graphic detail the heroic
actions of Atherstone as he battled tremendous obstacles. He fought political pressures to hurry the ship into
the air, fended off Britain’s most feted airship pilot, who used his influence to take command of the ship and
nearly crashed it, and, a scant two months before departing for India, guided the rebuilding of the ship to
correct its faulty design. After this tragic accident, Britain abandoned airships, but R.101 flew again, its
scrap melted down and sold to the Zeppelin Company, who used it to create LZ 129, an airship even more mighty
than R.101—and better known as the Hindenburg.

Set against the backdrop of the British Empire at the height of its power
in the early twentieth century, Fatal Flight portrays an extraordinary age in technology, fueled by humankind’s
obsession with flight.

You can listen to the complete book below, or
listen chapter by chapter. You can download each of these files as an mp3; you can also
download the complete book in ogg format or as a zip file of the individual chapters (other ways to download).